


Oh, I Beg Your Pardon, We Appear to Be in the Wrong Universe

by mithrel



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Blanket Permission, Crossover, Gen, Mind Meld, Parallel Universes, Podfic Welcome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-11
Updated: 2011-10-11
Packaged: 2017-10-24 12:58:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/263725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mithrel/pseuds/mithrel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor and Martha end up on the Enterprise, and, naturally, are thrown in the brig.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Oh, I Beg Your Pardon, We Appear to Be in the Wrong Universe

“Where are we?” Martha asked, as they stepped out of the TARDIS.

The Doctor looked around. “Some sort of ship.” He went over to a nearby console and pressed a few buttons. “Oh, brilliant!”

“What?” Martha asked.

“This is the _Enterprise!_ NCC-1701! The original! Kirk’s _Enterprise_! Gotta be somewhere between 2265 and 2293.” He looked around. “Mind you, it looks a bit different since the last time I was here, must have been refitted.”

“What are you talking about?” Martha demanded.

“Here! Who are you?”

Martha looked over to see a man very over-endowed in the muscles department pointing a gun at them. She sighed. No matter where they went, people always pointed guns at them. The only question was whether they shot bullets, or energy beams, or, on one particularly bizarre occasion, pineapple custard.

The Doctor stepped forward, holding out his hand to the scowling man. “Hi, I’m the Doctor, and this is Martha. Is this really the _Enterprise_?”

The guard ignored him. “What’s that?” he asked suspiciously, catching sight of the TARDIS. “How’d it get through the shields?”

“That’s our ship,” the Doctor replied.

The guard looked from him to the TARDIS, to Martha and back to the TARDIS. “Pull the other one, it’s got bells on.”

“No, really!” the Doctor protested.

“Come with me.”

###

“Great, we’re in prison again,” Martha muttered to the Doctor. “Remind me _why_ I wanted to come with you?”

“Oh, come on, Martha. Do you realize where we _are_? This is _it_! The one that started it all!”

“All what?”

“The five year mission? Boldly going where no man has gone before?” At her blank look he continued, more tentatively, “Seeking out new life and new civilizations?”

“What are you talking about?” Martha asked him.

“You seriously don’t know?” the Doctor asked her.

“No, I don’t, that’s why I’m _asking!_ And I’ll thank you not to be smug at me!”

The Doctor opened his mouth to explain, but was interrupted by the arrival in the brig of a man–in a blue uniform this time, rather than red–with pointed ears and a noticeable lack of expression.

“Commander Spock!” the Doctor exclaimed, beaming.

The man raised an eyebrow. “Pardon me, but I do not believe you and I are acquainted.”

“Sure we are, you remember–” the Doctor broke off. “Wait, what’s the Stardate?”

“2258.42,” the man–Spock–replied promptly.

“2258, that explains it. I haven’t been here yet.” The Doctor seemed to think of something suddenly. “Hang on, why are you even out here? The five year mission didn’t start for another seven years! Or are you still serving under Captain Pike?” he inquired.

“Captain Pike is no longer in command of this vessel.”

“Then what’s going on? Kirk shouldn’t be Captain yet!”

His eyebrow rose again. The gesture seemed to have a great many subtle shades of meaning, Martha noted. This one seemed to be irritation mixed with puzzlement. “James Kirk is not the Captain. I am.”

“You are?” the Doctor asked, now obviously confused. “But you were never in command except in the 2280s, and that was only supposed to be a training mission!”

“Exactly how would you know this?” Spock inquired. “Who exactly are you? How did you come aboard this ship? We are at warp.”

“I’m the Doctor. This is Martha. We came in the TARDIS.”

“TARDIS?”

“My ship.”

“Our sensors would have noted any ships in the vicinity.”

“It’s on the _Enterprise,_ ” the Doctor said.

“Your ship is on the _Enterprise_ ,” Spock repeated evenly, clearly not believing a word of it.

“ _Yes!_ Look if you let me out of here I’ll _show_ you!”

“And give you a chance to escape? Hardly.”

“Look, what’s been going on? The time-stream’s been dramatically altered!”

“How exactly did you know that?” Spock asked, more sharply than Martha had heard him speak thus far.

“I told you, I’ve been here before! Well, not before, I came several decades from now, but–” the Doctor interrupted himself, then began again. “Look, we’re from the future…”

“Do you have any connection to Nero?” Spock asked suddenly.

“Nero? Nero who?”

Spock looked at Martha. “Do you mean the Roman emperor?” she asked tentatively.

“You had nothing to do with the destruction of Vulcan?”

“Vulcan’s been _destroyed?_ ” the Doctor yelped. “When!? _How!?_ ”

“Nero created a singularity inside it, apparently in retaliation for the future destruction of Romulus.”

“I am so sorry,” the Doctor said. Spock ignored this. Turning to Martha, he continued, “This is serious. Vulcan was one of the founding members of the Federation. It played an important part in Federation history for centuries.” He turned back to Spock. “When did the time-streams diverge?”

“Twenty-five years ago, when Nero destroyed the U.S.S. _Kelvin_ ,” Spock replied.

“That long ago?” he mused. “I wonder, did it create an alternate reality, changing the future? No, impossible, that’s a paradox. It must be a new reality, branching off from the point of divergence, not affecting the original time frame.”

“That was my conclusion,” Spock said.

The Doctor looked up, startled, as if he’d forgotten Spock was there. “We need to get out of here,” he said urgently, turning back to Martha.

“Why?”

“Look, the time-stream’s already been disrupted. Our being here could change things even further.”

“I am afraid I cannot let you go,” Spock told him.

“Why not?”

“You may be in collusion with Nero. I cannot release you until he has been stopped.”

“We can’t do much harm, can we, just sitting here?” Martha asked, although she was not looking forward to being stuck in a prison cell for however long it took to stop this “Nero.”

“You never know,” the Doctor said. “I’d offer to let you meld with me, to prove I’m telling the truth, but there’s so much information to sort through it’d take too long. I’ve forgotten more than I can remember.”

Martha ran that last sentence over in her head. She wasn’t sure if it made sense or not, but then that was usual, with the Doctor.

“I find that hard to believe.”

“Trust me, when you get to over 900, you forget a lot.”

“Humans do not live for nine hundred years,” Spock protested. “I would venture you are no more than forty Terran years old.”

“Three, actually, in this body, at least, but it’s complicated.”

“Evidently.”

“Besides, who said I was human?”

“It is possible you could be a Trill, but even they do not live that long.”

“You see any spots?” the Doctor said irritably. “I’m a Time Lord.”

“That species is not in the Federation databanks.”

“That’s because most of them never bothered with–” the Doctor sighed. “This is ridiculous, we need to leave. You’d better meld with me.”

“Melding with an unknown species–”

“Oh, for Rassilon’s sake, it’s perfectly safe to meld with me, you’ve done it before!”

“I have no memory of such an occurrence.”

The Doctor buried his hands in his hair. “Damned stubborn… _Look_ if you don’t believe me and you won’t meld with me, how can I convince you I’m telling the truth? I’m not in league with Nero, I don’t even know who he is, I just want to get out of here so you can get back to the bridge, which is where you belong in a crisis situation anyway!”

Spock ignored the implied criticism. “Very well. Your argument is logical.”

This time Martha raised an eyebrow. She’d heard the Doctor called many things, among them “brilliant” (mostly by himself), “insane” and “a menace to society,” but “logical” was not one of them.

While she was thinking this, Spock had called in another of the red-uniformed guards. “I am going to meld with the prisoner. Keep an eye on them both.”

“Sir,” the guard acknowledged, despite his obvious confusion.

Martha was just as confused. When Spock lowered the force field and entered the cell, she wondered exactly what he was going to do. He reached out with one hand and placed it on the Doctor’s face, near his temples. The Doctor let him, so she didn’t do anything.

They remained like that, both of them completely still, for so long that Martha began to get nervous. Finally Spock drew back. “Fascinating. I would like the opportunity to converse with you at length, Doctor, but you are correct. Given the existing damage to the time-stream, it is better that you leave.”

He turned to the guard. “Escort them to their ship. You will find it in corridor 47-A.”

“Sir!”

“Live long and prosper, Commander,” the Doctor said, holding out his hands in some sort of a salute that seemed like it should be painful.

Spock returned it. “Peace and long life, Doctor.”

The Doctor grinned. “’Long life,’ sure, if I’m lucky. ‘Peace’ isn’t on the menu.”

Spock’s lips quirked in a barely-perceptible smile. “Indeed.”

“Well, come on Martha, we need to go.”

###

“Are you going to tell me what all that was about?” Martha demanded, when they were back in the Vortex.

“All what?” the Doctor asked, turning from the controls.

“That...meld thing.”

“Spock’s a Vulcan. Well,” he corrected himself, “Half-Vulcan, his mother was human. They’re telepathic.”

“So he was reading your mind?” Martha asked.

“Not exactly. It was more like our minds temporarily merged.”

Martha shuddered, then thought of something. “You said he was a Vulcan…but the planet that was destroyed…”

“Yeah. His home planet.”

“He didn’t seem very upset.”

“Well, he wouldn’t. Vulcans are very logical and contained. They have to be, their emotions are so strong. Trust me, he was upset. His mother died on the planet.”

Martha winced.

“I’d have expected you to want to stay and help,” Martha said.

“Well, normally I would, but they’ll have enough trouble getting the future back on course without us there to distract them. We’ll check up on them later.”

“What was that ship, anyway?”

“The _Enterprise._ I’d been there before, but that was before someone changed the timeline,” the Doctor replied.

“Can they even _do_ that? Besides, what’s so important about that ship?”

“Wibbly-wobbly, remember? Here,” the Doctor keyed up some information on a monitor. “Brief history of the Federation, and Kirk’s _Enterprise._ Although that’s all changed now, with Vulcan gone…” He looked troubled.

Martha looked at him a moment, not sure what to say, then turned to the screen and began to read.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Oh, I Beg Your Pardon, We Appear to Be in the Wrong Universe (Podfic)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4564002) by [VeegiDawn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VeegiDawn/pseuds/VeegiDawn)
  * [[Podfic] Oh, I Beg Your Pardon, We Appear to Be in the Wrong Universe](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11046486) by [Night (Night_Inscriber)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Night_Inscriber/pseuds/Night)




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